02/11/2010

A Moroccan dinner for 12

I've just taken the longest break from posting since having created the blog but with good reason. I'm in California visiting my brother and the days have been busy. Busy enough for me to get some cooking in there too, but there just hasn't been time to sit down and write a post. I've done a bunch of cooking however, and visited a few markets, so I presently have bountiful new material.

Saturday morning my brother, parents, grandmother and I visited the local Santa Cruz organic farmer's market. There will be a post to follow about that market with pictures of all the beautiful produce available. We purchased some herbs, some tokyo turnips, watermelon radishes, some mixed greens and nasturtium for a salad, and some meyer lemons, which are undoubtedly my favourite type of lemon. While on the plane my mother and I watched a Bobby Flay show on the Food Network in which he prepared a Moroccan meal in a tagine. We had gone the day prior to a huge outlet centre at which we made a number of kitchen purchases, including a tagine that we later left with my brother.

We proceeded to make our purchases at three other locations - Whole Foods, Safeway and finally New Leaf, a local organic supermarket in Santa Cruz where we purchased our meat and I later found some very exciting items that will be featured in future posts.

That afternoon I made dinner for 12: the four members of my immediate family, three of my brother's friends, my Bubbie who came down from Vancouver, my grandma and grandpa who came from Sacramento, and my friend Cecile who came down from San Francisco. My mother wanted a Moroccan dinner after having seen Bobby Flay make such delicious looking food and so I made a dinner with those flavour profiles. The result was a great number of dishes, all of which were scrumptious if I do say so myself.

My mother prepared the carrots and salad so I shall not include recipes for those, but the rest of it was prepared by me, so enjoy. Start by making an all purpose spice mixture that I used for all of the dishes with some additions.

2 tbls coriander seeds

2 tbls cumin seeds

1 tbls mustard seeds

1 tbls fennel seed

Toast the seeds and then grind them in a spice grinder.

For the lamb

2 tbls olive oil

1 spanish onion diced

2" of ginger, peeled and sliced into thin discs

3 lbs of boneless leg of lamb, cut into 1" cubes

2 tbls of spice mixture

2 tsp paprika

1/4 cup of dried cranberries

1/4 cup of almonds

the juice of 2 oranges

about 20 min leaves

For the Chicken

2 tbls olive oil

8 thighs and 2 legs, bone in, skin on

4 leeks, white part only, sliced in 4

3 cloves of garlic, minced

10 dried apricots, roughly sliced

1/4 cup of almonds

4 meyer lemons, quartered and seeded

1/2 cup of Moroccan oil cured black olives

1.5 tbls of the spice mixture

10 stalks of cilantro

For the potatoes

3 lbs of fingerling potatoes, sliced in half

12 shallots, peeled, ends cut off

2 bunches of tokyo turnips, cleaned and greens discarded

1 bunch of parsley, chopped

1 tbls of spice mixture

1 tbls of ground turmeric

3 tbls of olive oil

For the squash

2 tbls olive oil

1 tbls rendered chicken fat (see directions)

1 large butternut squash, peeled and 1" dice

1 spanish onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbls of the spice mixture

1 tbls cinnamon

1/2 cup boiling water

Directions:

In a dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat, then when hot, sautee the onion for 10 minutes until golden. In a separate bowl, mix the lamb with the spice mixture and salt and pepper, then mix well with your hands. Add the ginger to the onions, and sautee for two more minutes. In batches, sear the lamb in a caphalon or teflon frying pan over high heat, and add each batch to the pot with the onions and ginger. When all the meat has been browned, add paprika to the pot. Add the orange juice to the frying pan, then immediately pour that liquid into the dutch oven. Add the cranberries and almonds, cover, lower the heat to low and allow to simmer for 2 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 400F. Heat the bottom section of a tagine over medium heat on the burner, add the olive oil and then the leeks. When the leeks have softened, lower to medium low, add the spice mixture, and stir occasionally. Add the apricots, lemons and olives. In a separate frying pan, heat over medium, and add the chicken skin skide down. Brown in batches and removed chicken from pan when the skin is brown and a lot of fat has been rendered. After each batch has been browned, remove the chicken fat to a small bowl and place the pieces of chicken on top of the mixture in the tagine. Add 1/4 cup of water to the tagine, cover it and leave in the oven for an hour.

Combine all of the ingredients of the potatoes in a large bowl, add S+P, mix well making sure that all of the ingredients are covered with both olive oil and spices. Transfer to a baking dish with a lid, or if there's no lid, cover with tinfoild, and place in the oven with the tagine for 45 minutes.

Combine the oil and chicken fat in a large pot and heat over medium heat. Add onions, sautée for ten minutes, then add garlic, spice mixture, cinnamon and squash. After about 5 minutes, add the water, put the lid on and allow to simmer for 30 mutes. Remove lid and purée with an immersion blender.

Before serving, toss the lamb with the mint and the chicken with cilantro.

Comments

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Avi, your blog is a delight. Your love of cooking is infectious. I was never bitten by the food bug. While I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that I think food is fuel and I like an auto need to top off when I'm running low, I have never felt particularly creative with recipes. I can peer into a fridge that is brimming with food and be unable to see a thing to eat. I used to trawl the web looking for tips for planning meals and would get stuck before I even got started. Alas...

What I love about your blog is you've managed to make cooking appear manageable without making it "quick" or "easy," without denuding it of the complexity that makes it becoming in the first place.

I adored your ode to your mother. What a fabulous cook to have as your first mentor.

What a wonderful experience to have the fabulous Santa Cruz dinner prepared by Avi with an additional touch of class by Barb. Absolutely delicious food and conversation.Seeing Isaac, Goldie and Ken made the event complete. Let us know where and when the next such event is and we'll be there, fork and knife in hand. Love, Grandma and Grandpa